Re: A social model

Trust is a notion that is crucial for understanding security. How would 
the notion of trust fit in? It seems to be something that would be 
"parallel" to authority in your diagram, insofar as it lies between 
agents and social contracts, and lives in the social domain.

Jeff


Francis McCabe wrote:

> This diagram attempts to explicate the fundamental relationships 
> between agents, owners and  actions undertaken by services.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> The critical concept here is actually social fact. An example of a 
> social fact is a policy (i.e., an agreed constraint on the behavior of 
> services etc.), a signed contract, and so on. Social facts really 
> represent the shared state between the various players.
>
> Note that it is useful to remember the distinction between signing a 
> contract, telling someone that you have signed the contract and the 
> signed document itself.
>
> In order to establish a social fact two things are required: one or 
> more actions (typically in the form of sending messages to Web service 
> providers or requesters) and the requisite authority. For example, if 
> I send a purchase order message to a widget selling Web service then 
> that is the required action to place an order; however, if I do not 
> have a legitimate account with the Web service, or if I am under the 
> age of 18, then I haven't actually placed the order. The establishment 
> of the order (or policy etc.) is called the *enactment* of the 
> purchase order.
>
> Social facts are always interpreted relative to a social domain (or 
> even a domain of computers). Consequently, authority is also relative 
> to a social domain (the president of the USA has no authority in 
> Venezuela).
>
> Authority is also linked to the roles in a transaction; the president 
> may have the right to appoint a judge, but doesn't have the right to 
> make legal judgements in a court of law.
>
> =============
> This model is useful as a way of capturing the necessary relationships 
> between agents, policies, policy declarations, and valid constraints. 
> Asserting a policy is an example of enacting a social fact. The entity 
> declaring the policy has to perform the requisite action and have the 
> required authority (otherwise the policy is not, in fact, a valid 
> policy).
>
> I am aware that the scope of this model goes way beyond SOAP, WSDL, 
> etc. However, I offer it as a way of gaining clarity on some important 
> aspects of the architecture which *do* impinge pretty directly on SOAP 
> etc.
>
> Frank
>